


Terrible Things That Could Happen to a High Garda Captain

by RosalindInPants



Series: Love and Trauma [1]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture, Whump, canon gap fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 17:01:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21256640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants
Summary: After they are arrested at the end of Ink and Bone, Wolfe and Santi are taken in a different direction than Jess. When Wolfe meets the class the next morning, he seems to be in a hurry to present their Library assignments and leave. What could have happened while Wolfe and Santi were separated from Jess?The Artifex spent the whole book threatening to hurt Santi if Wolfe didn't behave. What if he actually did?





	Terrible Things That Could Happen to a High Garda Captain

**Author's Note:**

> From Ink and Bone:
> 
> Chapter 15: There were scars on Santi's chest. Jess would have thought they were battle scars, but these looked too regular. Too even. Too calculated.  
Later in chapter 15: "I'm sorry, Nic," Wolfe said.  
"I'm not," Santi said, and crossed his booted feet. "It was worth every moment of what comes next."  
Wolfe turned his face away, and in a flash of passing light from outside, Jess saw that there were tears streaking his face.
> 
> From chapter 16: Jess sat down on the bench and said, "Where's Santi?"  
"Home. They know where to find him anytime they want, and of course the Artifex made sure that I know the litany of terrible things that could happen to a High Garda captain, regardless of his rank or commendations."

As soon as the doors of the Reading Room closed behind him, Scholar Wolfe broke into a run. The Serapeum was not, in the normal course of things, a place for running, and the few Scholars present in the early hours of the morning scrambled to get out of his way, gaping like slack-jawed fish. Even the High Garda on duty turned to watch him as he passed. Wolfe found that he didn't care. Let them think him mad. They already did. Poor, crazy Wolfe, snapped under the strain of his work and had to be sent away. Poor, crazy Wolfe turned heretic. Poor, crazy Wolfe, crossed the Artifex and got what he deserved.

He needed to be away from this place. He needed to be _ home _.

* * *

After Wolfe and Santi had been separated from Jess, their High Garda captors - the Artifex's own creatures, no doubt, Nic's soldiers would have been kinder about it - had brought them down into the depths of the Serapeum, into halls that grew dark and narrow, lined with the barred doors of holding cells. Halls that Wolfe knew so horribly well. The stale air reeked of blood and misery, or maybe that was a trick of his broken mind, an unwanted memory come to taunt him.

His scars itched. His pulse raced. He kept his hands from shaking only by sheer force of will.

He might have lost his mind if not for Nic, steady at his side. Nic kept up a constant one-sided conversation with the other soldiers, remarking on their form, their equipment, the sorts of things he would talk about with his own troops, all with the casual confidence of a man who was in command, not one being led with bound hands to his doom. The sound of his voice was a lifeline, and Wolfe clung to it like the drowning man he was. One foot in front of the other, one carefully controlled breath at a time, he walked down that hall for minutes that stretched into eternity.

The soldiers brought them to a small room that might have been an office, were it not so bare. An empty desk pushed into one corner. A heavy-looking chair. A thick door with a narrow, barred window, and nothing more. Not a room Wolfe recognized. Shameful, the wave of relief that washed over him at that observation.

"You first, Captain," Wolfe couldn't see the lead soldier's face as she motioned for Nic to enter the room, but he could hear the sneer in her voice.

He summoned up all the contempt he could muster. "I do believe discipline is slipping among these young soldiers. Can you imagine speaking to a superior officer that way, Nic?"

Somehow, Nic managed a laugh. "Oh, if I'd taken that tone with a captain back when I was a..." He paused to inspect the soldier's insignia as he entered the room. "...sergeant, my captain would have had me cleaning latrines for a month. With my own toothbrush."

The sergeant ignored them. She gestured to the chair. "Have a seat, sir."

He sat, crossed his legs and leaned back, looking as relaxed as a man could look with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Wolfe's own escort didn't give him the courtesy of spoken commands. Hands closed around his arm, and he was marched into the room and brought to stand against the wall opposite Nic’s chair, a soldier to either side of him. So they saw him as a threat. Flattering. Not as flattering as the four men who surrounded the chair, but flattering all the same.

"It would seem you haven't arranged for adequate seating," Nic said. "Shall I give up my chair for the Scholar? It's basic courtesy, as you should know, Sergeant. They really are getting lax in their training these days, Chris."

"You'll stay right where you are, Captain. The Artifex Magnus gave very clear orders." The sergeant opened the one drawer in the desk.

A drawer full of shackles and chains. How... charming. The sort of thing that demanded a sarcastic comment, but the words wouldn't come. Wolfe's mouth felt dry, his chest tight.

_ His wrists bound behind him, just like this, as the guards dragged him down the hall toward that awful room. He could already see the firelight flickering through the doorway, smell the smoke of the brazier where the iron rods would already be heating until they glowed. They would force him through that door, they would - _

But nothing moved. His wrists remained bound by Library restraints, not irons, and that difference was enough for him to latch onto and haul himself back to the present. The clatter of the chains was not for him, but for Nic, now fastened to the chair at the ankles, with a soldier in the process of cuffing his hands to the back of the chair. With sickening certainty, Wolfe understood why they were restraining him like that. The Artifex was finally done with threats.

"Bad form, soldier, removing the restraints with both my arms unsecured. I see no fewer than three weapons I could have gotten hold of before you could react. Cuff the left first, then keep one hand on the right wrist while you undo the restraints. Could save your life."

Looking at him closely - and he needed so very badly to look closely at Nic right now - Wolfe could just see the edge of fear beneath his lover's external calm. There was a tightness in his posture, as if he were ready to spring, and just the hint of unsteadiness in his eyes.

"Were you planning on trying something, Captain?" the sergeant asked.

"You seem to think I am." He punctuated the statement by shaking an ankle, rattling the chain that held it to the chair.

The sound sent a shiver through Wolfe's body. He fought the impulse to keep on shaking and never stop, while first worry, then a silent plea for forgiveness flashed across Nic's face. He held himself still and took slow, even breaths until his pulse calmed and some of the tension went out of his muscles. Nic had enough to worry about without Wolfe breaking right in front of him.

"Artifex's orders. Nothing personal, sir." That was definitely a sneer. Wolfe would have liked to burn that look off the sergeant's face with Greek fire.

Anger was good. Anger was distracting. "And where is our illustrious leader right now, anyway?" he asked.

"The Artifex is a busy man. He had another meeting."

The bastard would be with the postulants, no doubt. It was the logical move: he and the Archivist had failed to kill their enemies, so instead they would try to turn them against one another. He would have gotten to most of them already, as soon as he had them removed from the house. Plenty of time there to fill their heads with lies. Plenty of time to... he couldn't think about what would have happened to Thomas, what might still be happening to Thomas. Not here, not now. He turned his thoughts back to assessing the situation. The Artifex would be with Jess now, perhaps, recruiting the boy to his cause. Tragic for him that Wolfe had already anticipated the move. Unless, of course, the Artifex had already considered Wolfe's own strategy and found some way to circumvent it. He would know when he presented his class with their contracts. Presuming the Artifex allowed him to do so. It would be entirely too easy to disappear in these dark halls.

A loud burst of laughter from Nic, so completely out of place in their situation, shook Wolfe out of his darkening thoughts. He'd sunk so far into himself that at first he wasn't sure what his partner was laughing about. It took a minute to recognize the old war story, one of the more pleasant ones they shared. If only those memories could seize him as completely as the ones of his time in prison did. But when had the gods ever seen fit to show him such kindness?

When they had given him Nic. And maybe that was enough. Maybe all the rest was just the price he had to pay to balance the scales after being granted a gift he could never be worthy of.

Halfway through the next war story, the Artifex finally deigned to grace them with his presence. He swept into the room in a swirl of gaudy robes with a smug look on his wrinkled face and an angry-looking young woman in scholar's robes at his heels. The sergeant stood aside, and the Artifex stood facing Wolfe while his lackey went to the desk and set down a black leather case. 

Wolfe couldn't take his eyes off that case, the flash of light off of steel when it opened.

"I think I have warned you enough of the consequences of your actions, Scholar Wolfe. It is time we proceeded to a more direct demonstration. Remember: you could have prevented this." He turned to face Nic without waiting for a response.

"And just what am I accused of this time?" Wolfe asked. "Failing to die at your whim? Refusing to sit still and let all your carefully arranged accidents happen?" He knew what this was really about, of course, Thomas and his press, which the Artifex no doubt thought Wolfe guilty of inspiring. He wouldn't be the one to raise the topic himself, though. If the Artifex thought he would get easy answers from Wolfe, he should have known better.

"Shut him up," the Artifex said in a voice as cold as ice.

Wolfe braced himself for the inevitable blow, eyes shutting involuntarily. He heard the impact of flesh on flesh, but felt nothing. Opening his eyes, he saw Nic lift his head and spit blood while one of his four guards stepped back, fist still clenched.

And then Wolfe was falling, shoved down to his knees hard enough to bruise. Hands dug into his shoulders, holding him in place. His own hands wouldn't stop shaking. 

The Artifex took a step toward the chair. "Captain. I do believe I asked you to keep Wolfe in line."

"Artifex." Nic managed to sound almost bored. "I do believe I take my orders from my commander, not from you. Does he know you're threatening one of his officers? As I recall, he was displeased last time we did this."

Last time. Wolfe could almost hear the voice in his ears, cloyingly sweet poison._ "And this is a gift from your beloved Captain Santi. He's so determined to find you, even after being told what would happen if he kept looking. Such devotion deserves matching scars, don't you think?" _ He'd thought it another lie until he saw the marks on Nic's chest after his release.

"He understands the necessity of making this statement," the Artifex said. He signaled to his assistant, and she lifted a blade from the case. Thin and sharpened on both sides, with jagged serrations. "Consider this a reminder of how dangerous your work is. So much can happen to a soldier in the line of duty."

The Artifex's pet torturer circled around behind Santi, a vicious smile spreading across her face. She reached around him to hold the knife to his throat, pressing it into his skin until drops of blood welled up around the points of the serrations. Wolfe dragged his eyes up, away from the sight of those drops trailing down Nic's throat, to meet his lover's gaze. There was no hint of fear there now, only the calm that came over him on the battlefield.

"The Burners grow bolder each day," the Artifex continued. "Why, just this very night, their assassins murdered a promising student in his bed right under our noses in Ptolemy House. The High Garda might be their next target. Even the most talented, decorated officer might have his throat cut in his sleep. Or perhaps they might take a high-ranking hostage, one who could give them valuable information if they applied the right... pressure. Perhaps you need to be reminded of your last encounter with such extremists." That had been the lie they told to explain Santi's injuries after he tried to find Wolfe: an attack by Burners.

While the Artifex spoke, the torturer brought the knife down, trailing the point along Santi's neck until she reached the collar of his jacket. In a swift cut that left a line of blood in its wake, she sliced through the jacket and the shirt beneath, then pulled the ruined clothing aside. The point of the knife came to rest on the first scar in the orderly row across his chest, a scene from the nightmares Wolfe's tortured imagination had conjured during his worst nights in prison.

He closed his eyes, prayed to all the gods of Egypt that this really was a nightmare. It wouldn't be the first time a dream had seemed so real. But a hand tangled in his hair and yanked his head up.

"You're supposed to be watching, Scholar," the soldier whispered harshly in his ear.

The tip of the knife was under Nic's skin now, opening the scar. "Oh, I remember perfectly well," Nic said, his tone still deadly calm. "It was such an enlightening view of who my enemies are."

At a signal from the Artifex, the torturer twisted the knife. Nic's body went rigid, his jaw clenched, and his breaths came harder and heavier. Wolfe's own scars ached at the sight of it. He remembered that feeling too well: the tearing, the sense of invasion, the nausea that came with the pain.

His fault. This was his fault. If he had only listened, trusted Nic's assessment that going with Jess was too dangerous...

The knife ripped free of the first scar, now an open wound once more, and plunged into the next, twisted again. And then the next. Through eyes blurry with tears, Wolfe watched Nic jerk away from the pain. An involuntary movement, and an ineffective one. The jagged edges of the knife only caught and tore at his skin more. The new scar would be larger than the original. He didn't scream; the only sound was his rapid, heavy breathing. He let out a grunt at the next twist of the knife, a sound more of rage than of pain, as was the shout that the last cut drew from him.

In memories rising too close to the surface, Wolfe could hear his own screams, feel the phantom blade move beneath his own skin. He cursed himself for being so selfish as to think of his own pain when Nic was the one suffering in that chair.

A line of red pits across Nic's chest. Trails of blood. Wolfe couldn't tell his own ragged breaths from his partner’s. Their eyes met, and Nic's mouth turned up in a fragile shadow of the smile Wolfe so loved. It should have been a relief to see him still well enough to smile even that much, but there was no room for relief beneath the crushing weight of guilt. Distantly, Wolfe was aware of the sound of a Codex chiming, pages turning.

"It would appear that we need to hurry this lesson along to its conclusion," the Artifex said, closing his Codex with a loud snap. "Your presence will be required in the Reading Room shortly, Scholar Wolfe."

"And I have... training exercises to supervise," Nic said, starting shaky, but gaining strength. "Have to be ready for those _ Burners _."

"Your medical leave is already approved, Captain Santi," the Artifex said. He nodded to his torturer, and she put the knife away, took out a gun and pointed it at Santi's chest, right over the middle scar.

A High Garda pistol, the same model Nic carried. The damage it could do, at such close range...

An empty threat. It had to be an empty threat. Nic was too valuable to the High Garda, they would never allow the Artifex to murder one of their best officers, not like this, right in front of a group of soldiers.

The Artifex went on, "It is a great tragedy, how many brave soldiers we lose in combat each year. How many times have you been wounded in battle, Captain? How many narrow escapes from death? The next shot could so easily be fatal."

The sound of the shot echoed in Wolfe's ears. Nic slumped in the chair, his bound wrists the only thing keeping him from falling to the floor. Wolfe struggled against the two men holding him, all logic and calculation abandoned. He was screaming, sobbing, a wild, frantic sound interrupted when the Artifex seized his jaw in a crushing grip.

"Oh, get over yourself, Christopher," the old man snapped, leaning in so close that Wolfe could smell the coffee on his breath. "He'll live. This time. Do not continue to try the Archivist's patience, or mine. Get yourself together and go attend to your duties." He released Wolfe and stood, wiping his hand on his robe as if he had just dipped it in mud.

Past him, Wolfe could see Nic, still limp in the chair, still bleeding, but breathing. They had used training ammunition, not a full-strength shot. Enough to stun, but not to kill.

As soon as the two soldiers holding him lifted him to his feet, Wolfe threw his weight against the smaller of the two, hoping to knock him off balance and shake free of the other's grasp to run to Nic's side. The smaller man was sturdier than he looked, though, and all Wolfe got for his trouble was a hard shake.

"Come on, Scholar, you have work to do," the other soldier said, yanking Wolfe toward the door.

He planted his feet, useless as it was. Wolfe might have been athletic, as far as Scholars went, but he knew better than to think himself a match for even one man of the High Garda, let alone two, now that he had given up the element of surprise. "What about Nic?" he asked, panic creeping into his voice.

The Artifex smiled. "You don't need to worry about him. I'll have him brought home. I know the address." No mistaking the threat in that.

As if Wolfe didn't already know that the Artifex knew exactly where they both lived.

They brought him to a small chamber, one of the moving pieces of the Serapeum. One of the soldiers touched a sequence of symbols on the wall, and the room began to rise, taking them up toward the top of the pyramid. Wolfe composed himself as he waited, wrapping fear and anguish tightly in a cloak of fury. _ Nic will be fine _ , he told himself. _ He's survived worse. _

The soldiers let him out of the restraints when the lifting chamber stopped moving, but not before warning him of how quick they would be to shoot him if he tried anything. They didn't seem to understand that his anger wasn't for them. Not the worst of it, at least. One offered him a handkerchief, but he gave them his most contemptuous look and stalked away without taking it. There was a washroom between his current position and the Reading Room, and he slipped in to splash cold water onto his face until no trace remained of redness or tears. He ran his fingers through his hair until it looked merely unkempt, not as if it had nearly been yanked out of his head, and then he went to face his students. After so much practice at hiding his scars, he could hide this, too.

* * *

When Wolfe got home, he found the front door slightly ajar, a sight that froze him with panic. Intellectually, he knew perfectly well that something as simple as a locked door couldn't stop the Artifex's men. They didn't even have to pick the lock; the key from Nic's pocket would let them in. But every instinct screamed at him to turn and run, that it was a trap, that they would arrest him again if he walked through that door.

_ If they're arresting you, they already have Nic _ , he told himself, and he forced one foot in front of the other until he was standing at the door. The sound of a groan from within propelled him through it. _ What a surprise. No ambush. _ He mocked himself viciously for his paranoia while he locked the door and hurried to the bedroom, but that didn't keep his eyes from darting to the landmarks of the room. There, the shelf that used to hold Blanks permanently loaded with his own books, now empty. To the other side, the wall he and Nic had collapsed against when he stumbled back into Nic's arms after his release from prison.

The soldiers who brought Nic home had done more for him than Wolfe's own mother had done that night, Wolfe noted bitterly as he entered the bedroom. They hadn't left him bleeding in the street outside; they'd laid him down comfortably with a pillow under his head and a bandage wrapped around his chest. A bandage that was coming loose as Nic struggled to sit up. Two stitched cuts were visible where the gauze had fallen away, along with bruising where the training round had hit.

Wolfe caught his partner in his arms and guided him back down onto the bed. Sitting up at his side, Wolfe fixed him with a stern look. "What do you think you're doing? You have no business being awake, let alone upright." While he lectured, his fingers found the edges of the bandage and carefully tucked them back into place.

Nic offered him a weak smile that didn't come close to hiding the pain in his eyes. "Chris, I..."

Wolfe silenced him with one finger on his lips. "Hush. All this time and you still think you can impress me by hauling yourself out of bed and bleeding all over the floor?" He lifted his finger from Nic's lips and stroked his cheek, prickly with a day's beard growth he would normally have already shaved off by this hour. "I'm getting you one of the good pain pills. Anything else you need?"

"Do you know where...?" Nic began. His voice sounded too strained for Wolfe's comfort.

"Top cabinet over the stove, behind the bag of dried beans we never use," Wolfe said. "You think I never looked for them?"

The Medica who came to examine Wolfe on the morning after his release had left a supply of painkillers with Nic, along with strict instructions to limit Wolfe's access to them for fear of addiction. A needless concern, as it turned out, but Nic still kept the bottle of pills hidden. With seemingly endless days of sitting at home with no work to do, there had been more than enough time for Wolfe to locate that little bottle, not to actually take any of the pills it contained, but simply to relieve his boredom and keep his options open. 

He had to drag a chair into the kitchen to reach the back of the cabinet, but the bottle was still in its place there, and he brought it, along with a glass of water, back to the bedroom. Along the way, he checked the locks on doors and windows both. Just to be safe.

Nic held out a surprisingly steady hand to take the pill Wolfe offered. "How long have you known where those were?"

Wolfe sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. "About a year now." He waited for Nic to put the pill in his mouth, then wrapped an arm around his shoulders to lift him up just enough to drink the water without spilling it. Even that small movement was enough to elicit a muffled grunt of pain. Wolfe handed Nic the glass without letting on that he'd heard anything.

Nic watched him with narrowed eyes while he drank. "How many left?"

"After this? Eight. You can quit worrying. I don't like them." He had tried one, and only one, when a bout of illness made his usual aches unbearable. The difficulty of telling memory from reality with his mind hazy from the drug was enough to make him decide the aches were bearable after all. "You should be resting, love, not worrying about me." He took the empty glass from Nic and lowered him back down onto the pillow.

"So demanding," Nic said, closing his eyes.

Wolfe leaned over to kiss his forehead. "You'd have killed yourself years ago with your needless heroics if I wasn't."

He sat and watched while Nic’s breathing slowed, his body relaxing into sleep. So many times he’d sat at Nic’s bedside, and it never got easier. It always hurt to see the man he loved in pain. There was always the utterly irrational fear that each breath Nic let out would be his last. Often, there was guilt. Nic shielded him so often in the line of duty, and now Nic had been hurt because of Wolfe’s recklessness yet again. If he’d only listened… If he’d only been able to close his heart to the children who had invaded it…

Somewhere, in the endless cycle of watching Nic’s breaths, Wolfe fell asleep. He woke, heart racing from a forgotten nightmare, to the sound of Nic’s Codex chiming with a message.

Zara. It hard to be Zara. Pestering Nic with unnecessary questions or updates when he needed to rest. She was an insufferable nuisance at the best of times, but now...

Wolfe picked up his partner's Codex, ready to tell Zara just how far she could go and fuck off, but the message wasn't from her, after all. It was written in the Artifex's hand, and it chilled him to the bone.

_ If Wolfe steps out of line again, it will be both of you together. _


End file.
